Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Nineteen

“Talking to Desmond Burke and Tony Marcus and Albert Antonioni,” my father said, “seems to be working out splendidly for you. The only people who haven’t been shot at so far this week are riding Duck Boats.”

“You left out Vinnie Morris,” I said.

“He is a separate category,” Phil Randall said. “Vinnie falls on the right side of things more often than not, despite some of the crum-bums for whom he has worked in the past. In addition to being a very natty dresser.”

“‘Crum-bums’?” I said.

“It’s an expression older and nattier dressers like myself still use,” he said.

We were in my living room having coffee that I had made with a Keurig that I’d owned for a month but was just learning to operate properly, having finally figured out when to close the lid. My father was wearing a gray V-neck sweater over a Tattersall shirt, underneath a navy blazer. His gray pants were pressed and cuffed. Black tasseled loafers. Argyle socks. There was the faint whiff in the room of the sandalwood cologne he had been wearing for as long as I had been alive. I called it the dad scent.

It was the morning after someone shot up Felix Burke’s condo. My father had stopped at the Flour Bakery and Café on Dalton Street, down near the Hynes Convention Center, for cranberry-orange scones.

As far as I could determine, he was giving Rosie a bite for every one he took. There was no point in telling him to stop, it was like trying to stop the ocean when the two of them were together.

“Where’s my sainted mother this morning?” I said.

“Don’t try to change the subject,” he said. “But since you asked, it is her turn to host her bridge group.”

My mother, who was resistant to just about everything new except chin tucks, had shocked us all recently by announcing that she was going to learn how to play bridge. My father, who had always been a wonderful bridge player, now lived in fear that she would eventually ask him to partner with her in a separate couples group. This from a man who wasn’t afraid of ISIS.

“How’s that working out for her?” I said.

He sighed and sipped some of his coffee. “Bridge too far,” he said.

I giggled.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Laugh.”

Then he said, “You still haven’t told me about your meeting with Albert.”

We were supposed to have had coffee yesterday, until the shooting in Charlestown. I told him now. I told him about the Old Canteen and Albert suggesting that if this were an ancient grudge, it might be an Irish one.

“An Italian saying that,” he said, grinning. “Old boy’s got balls on him still.”

“This whole thing,” I said, “has become a mishegoss.”

He smiled. It always made his face young.

“I’m not sure I remember that particular expression from our old country,” he said.

“My therapist is Jewish,” I said.

My father fed Rosie again, saw me watch him do it, winked.

“I’m going to tell you things I know you’ve already thought about, and Belson has thought about, and I’ve thought about,” he said. “The guy could have killed Richie, didn’t. Then he only murders some windows and furniture at Felix’s. But he does murder Peter in between.”

“Peter wasn’t as close to Desmond as Richie and Felix are,” I said.

“But them he spares.”

“Makes no sense,” I said. “But then little about this does.”

“Richie would prefer you stay out of it,” my father said.

“But he knows I can take care of myself, Daddy,” I said. “I actually think there’s a part of him that doesn’t want me poking around in his father’s past. Like even now, even though he’s all grown up, he doesn’t want to know what he doesn’t want to know about Desmond.”

“Desmond and Felix,” my father said, shaking his head. “Still acting like knockaround guys even when they should be sitting on the front porch at a retirement community.”

“Old men operating off all the old codes,” I said.

“You still don’t want to piss off any of them,” he said.

“May have already,” I said.

“Desmond loves Richie,” he said. “Richie loves you. These are immutable facts, and will always count for something.”

“You sound like a Jewish therapist,” I said.

“Imagine that,” he said. “An old flatfoot like myself.”

“All we know for sure is that someone is slowly squeezing Desmond,” I said.

“What does that text message to Felix really mean?” Phil Randall said.

“Perhaps just another way of talking about sins of the father,” I said. “Even though Felix is Desmond’s brother.”

“Maybe Albert Antonioni is right about the Irish,” he said. “Maybe this is something whose reach makes it all the way back to Winter Hill.”

“I’ve got it!” I said, slapping my thigh. “I’ll just call Whitey Bulger and ask him.”

“Tell me again who played him in that movie?”

“Johnny Depp.”

“I liked him better as the gay pirate.”

“That’s what Spike calls him.”

“Well,” he said, “Spike ought to know.”

“I feel as if most of the people I need to talk to might be dead or in jail,” I said.

My father said, “Maybe not all.”

He got up, picked up my plate and his, took them into the kitchen. I could hear the water running. My whole life, he had been neater than hospital corners. I knew he would rinse the cups before he left, too. And maybe vacuum the rugs.

“You know someone?” I said when he was back in the living room.

“I may,” he said. “Let me make a few calls.”

He picked up the cups now, went back into the kitchen. I could hear the water running again. If you were born round, he always said, you didn’t die square.

He said that he was going to take a nice long walk in the park while he was waiting for the bridge party to clear out of his house.

“The problem with retirement,” he said, “is that you can never take a day off.”

I hugged him. He hugged me back. Neither one of us ever went through the motions with that. I felt as safe and happy in his embrace as I always had been, for as long as I could remember.

“Be careful,” he said.

“Always.”

“I mean it,” he said. “It doesn’t take much knowing or asking around to know that you and Richie are still together. If they came for the others, they might come for you.”

“Not a Burke, Daddy.”

“Not to me,” he said. “But to them.”

I pulled back from him, smiling.

“Mishegoss!” I said in a loud voice.

“God bless you,” my father said.